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Parallel Construction
Parallel Construction. By parallel construction is meant the use of a series of words, phrases, clauses, or statements in the same construction. The following quotations will serve to illustrate this use. The elements having the same construction should be pointed out in each of the sen¬tences or paragraphs given below, and the punctu¬ation of such series noted. 1. In prepositional phrases. I thought sometimes I saw the flash of distant spires, the sunny gleam of upland pastures, the soft undulation of purple hills. -GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, Prue and I. 2. In independent statements. a. The declarative statement. I breathe (declarative statement) the soft air (noun) of the purple uplands (phrase) which they shall never tread (adjective clause). I hear (declarative statement) the sweet music (noun) of the voices (phrase) they long for in vain (adjective clause). - GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, Prue and I. b. The exclamatory statement. How that long, wistful glance annihilated time and space, how forms and faces, unknown to any other, rose in sudden resurrection around her ! -GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, Prue and I. c. The interrogative statement. Another chance was given to our fathers ; were they to throw it away as they had thrown away the former ? Were they again to be cozened by le Roy le vent ? Were they again to advance their money on pledges which had been forfeited over and over again ? — THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, Essay on Milton. d. The imperative statement. If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, Speak to me : If there be any good thing to be done, That may to thee do ease and grace to me, Speak to me : If thou art privy to thy country's fate, Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, 0, speak ! —WILLIAM SHAKSPERE, Hamlet, Act I., Sc. r. 3. In the participle. So Minim goes on through the series, brandishing his ancestors about my head, and incontinently knock¬ing me into admiration. — GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, Prue and I. 4. In the object clause. But I knew, as I gazed enchanted, that the hills, so purple-soft of seeming, were hard, and gray, and barren in the wintry twilight ; and that in the distance was the magic that made them fair. —GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, Prue and I. 5. In the adverbial clause. He finds only praise in the epitaphs, because the human heart is kind ; because it yearns with wistful tenderness after all its brethren who have passed into the cloud. If they were unacquainted with works of -philoso¬phers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. —THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, Essay on Milton. 6. In the finite verb. But to those who . . . . protected and pitied her, she afterwards revealed herself . . . . accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them happy in love and victorious in war. -THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, Essay on Milton. 7. In the infinitive. To know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him, was with them the great end of existence. - THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, Essay on Milton. 8. In the relative clause. Those who roused the people to resistance ; who directed their measures through a long series of event¬ful years ; who formed, out of the most unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen ; . . . who . . . . made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth,— were no vulgar fanatics. -THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, Essay on Milton. Parallel Construction and the Law of-Repetition. Uses of the Study of Parallel Construction. Paragraphs Containing Parallel Construction. Amplifying by Means of Parallel Construction. Condensing by Means of Parallel Construction. Violations of Parallel Construction.